The Cheap Seats

I remember the day I became a runner: May 31, 1985. College was still four months in the future but I was determined to maintain some semblance of good health after high school graduation for one simple reason - vanity. What can I say - the late teens and 20's can be a very narcissistic age. Granted, I was not accumulating ridiculous mileage every week (an easy 2-4 miles every morning), but I rarely missed a day. In fact, at my most obsessive, I logged 18 straight months of running between days off. Hung over? Run. Sick? Run. Subzero temperatures? Run. Blazing heat? Run. With the hindsight of 30 years, I wonder why that kid couldn't schedule more days off now and then. I suppose, besides the physical benefits, I viewed running as therapy - something I could control in a life that was continually experiencing change. It grew into the one constant bridge between life's many rites of passage - college, moving, job change, marriage, parenthood, divorce, aging.

"The doctors said my heart literally fell apart in their hands."   I'm not exactly sure when I heard those words, but I certainly have never forgotten them. They were spoken by my first employer, Rich Nelson. I was reminded of him - and the summer job he gave me - on a drive across western Wisconsin yesterday.   Almost entirely rural, western Wisconsin is covered with rolling hills and farmland. During my three-hour drive I saw field after field of freshly cut and baled hay. Not the same hay bales I could recall from my youth - these bales were large rolls that could only be loaded onto trailers with modern machinery, not a teenager equipped with two simple hay hooks.   Still, those large bales made me think of Rich. Retired from the U.S. Air Force, he and his family relocated to a small farm in rural Carlton County, 20 miles south of Duluth, Minnesota in the early 80's. A short, wiry man - Rich was obstinate and opinionated - a real barker - and altogeth

I am not a fan of short stories. Too long to read in one sitting (for me anyway), too short to make any lasting mark on my psyche. I haven't read any short stories - at least none come to mind -  so I am aware just how unfair my judgment of short stories is. But I've never eaten cauliflower either and I have no doubt that it's as awful as it looks and smells. Sorry, no fistful of melted Velveeta can save that foul-looking vegetable. But I digress. I am also not big on the author Ernest Hemingway, though I think I should be. I know I read The Old Man and the Sea in high school but all I can remember is an old man (presumably Ernest), a fish, and a rowboat. Regarded as one of the two or three greatest American writers, Papa (as he liked to be called) pioneered literary minimalism, never meeting a florid adjective he couldn't ignore (such as florid).   Dead now more than 50 years ago, Ernest Hemingway is also remembered for writing the shortest short story in th

If you have ever been an avid watcher of Mad Men, you know that the financial backbone of the fictional ad agency used to be its relationship with the real-life tobacco company, Lucky Strike. Upon hearing that the tobacco giant was going to fire Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce, Creative Director and partner Don Draper launched his own pre-emptive strike (no pun intended) by ending the firm's long relationship with Big Tobacco. The year was 1965. The Surgeon General's landmark Report on Smoking and Health was already a year old. Draper expressed his firm's position in an  open letter to The New York Times . Ironically, he wrote the letter while smoking a cigarette ( video ). Regardless, knowing what we have discovered about tobacco ever since, the letter was poignant and potent. The following letter is not. Instead, it's pouting and pathetic. While being an almost carbon copy of the Mad Men letter, it's actually a sad, desperate attempt to draw another personal l